If your childhood was anything like mine, chances are that one or both parents had to coax you into hitting the sack with a bedtime story or a lullaby. As we continue to grow, we perceive the concept of a “bedtime” as a punitive curfew devised for little children. Why, pray tell, would any adult subject oneself to a designated bedtime?

Ever wondered how the father-daughter dance is the most emotional moment during any wedding? It’s perhaps because it’s he who teaches you how a princess is treated so someday you may be a queen to the deserving king.

If there’s something as customary as making a wish upon a birthday candle, it’s breaking a new year’s resolution. Hardly a quarter of the year elapses before majority of us are well on our way to breaking the promises we earnestly made. Why then, is there still considerable hoopla around this yearly ritual?

We have the ability to access the world at our fingertips yet we’re baffled when tasked with identifying countries on the world map. We can recite Newton’s third law of motion verbatim yet we fail to remember the birthday of a loved one without the telltale Facebook reminder. We simmer up at the slightest nudge of external stimuli yet we successfully ignore those who go above and beyond to facilitate our wants and needs. In our quest for time, we have more trouble slowing down than we do speeding up.

It’s often said that life begins at the end of our comfort zone yet when we recognize an unconventional opportunity, we choose instead, to tread the familiar path of the “golden mean.” Our friend Aristotle described it as the desirable middle between any two extremes. In essence, reaching a happy medium or more simply put: mediocrity.

When was the last time you heard your parents say “We’re so happy with how mediocre you have been this past year”?

I tiptoed gingerly across the cold wooden floor, unraveled my mat and quietly placed two rectangular props or “blocks”, as I would later learn to call them, by the edges of my mat. What happened during the course of that one hour and over the next two years of my biweekly yoga practice has caused a directional shift in my outlook toward life.

What if I told you that outside of academia, you have the ability to add through subtraction? No, I’m certainly not John Nash and nor do I have a revolutionary mathematical equation but what I am certain of is your ability to do so.

From the moment we come into this world, wailing and crying as eight pound creatures bundled in infinite charm, we experience the feeling of home in the company of one extraordinary individual. Her eyes are your mirror, reflecting an abundance of warmth in an uncertain world.

My first fashion lookbook is inspired by and dedicated to the planet we call home. The hues of green and brown represent the rugged plains, valleys and topography while the feminine, floral prints emulate the delicate and susceptible quality of Mother Earth to be impacted by human intervention.

Our appetite for labels is almost insatiable and perhaps for a logical reason: given the overwhelming amount of external stimuli the human brain is subject to at any given moment, it is only natural for it to adapt to the sheer volume by categorizing behaviors into digestible chunks to make a speedy judgement. We astutely tune into social cues, physical characteristics and other superficial mechanisms to make a preliminary judgement. What we often fail to recognize is that this judgement is exactly that: preliminary.

When was the last time you encountered an “aha moment”, one that invoked an inexplicable drive to follow your dreams? The likes of those you experience as the aftermath of watching an inspirational Ted Talks or reading a motivational quote. Only, you discover days later, that the catalyst which invoked the bout of inspiration and creativity was short lived in bringing about a tangible, lasting change. Perhaps because creativity begins like a spark of light, one that is unstable and intermittent at its inception. It is only with streamlined efforts that this proverbial spark morphs into a warm glow of steady light.

Can you imagine a house without a mirror? Of all the things emblematic of a “home”: laughter, joy, people, pictures, etc., not once do we identify the mirror as an integral component. Yet, it’s the one place, among others, where we seek our life’s truth.

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